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I’d never expected to be equipped for fatherhood, but I clearly wasn’t equipped for unclehood, either.
When I stepped back into Amelia’s room, Cole and Teresa were already deep in conversation. They broke off in a way that always made me feel they were plotting, and then Cole held a cell phone out to me.
“Amelia wanted you to have this,” he said. “Joshua gave it to her. So he could set her up.”
He paused as he stared down at it, and I held my hand out impatiently.
Cole added, “Her mom just messaged her. She’s asking her where she is and if she’s okay. Which makes me wonder… why.”
“If Nathan Longroad is alive, maybe Amelia’s mom is working for him,” Teresa said.
Frustration washed over me. I should just rip out Amelia’s mother’s throat. From what I gathered, she’d been a piss poor parent.
But the reminder that Nathan Longroad was still out there somewhere was even worse. “Cole, stay with Dylan, all right? Make sure he’s safe.”
We could have a sleepover tonight. That was just my style.
As Cole headed for the door, I called after him, “And check on what he’s watching! Make sure he’s not recruited by the Illuminati or whatever it is parents worry about on Youtube.”
There wasn’t much in her messages. This was hardly my first time tracking down things someone had tried to hide from me, though. I went into iCloud on her phone and retrieved her backup files.
As I scrolled through the text messages that had been engineered to make it look as if she were betraying us to the Longroad pack, a distinctly murderous desire came over me. But I pressed it down. I had a plan.
Amelia’s sister, ‘Rose’ in the text messages, was likely a fake too.
Aiden told me what he did to Brennan. I’m so sorry. Does that mean you won’t help us after all?
But maybe it wasn’t.
I passed the phone to Teresa. She glanced at me uncertainly for a second, then took it. Our fingers overlapped briefly when she took the phone, and she yanked away as if my touch had scalded her before she scrolled through the messages.
Teresa frowned as she read them. “I can see why Amelia ran.”
“They’re fake.”
Teresa glanced up at me, giving me a distinctly sisterly look despite the way she seemed to react to me sometimes. “I’m aware, Stone.”
“I wanted to be sure you did.”
She sighed under her breath. “I don’t hate her. She’s a manipulative, deceitful—”
The warning growl in the back of my throat surprised us all.
Teresa raised her hands. “Let me finish, Stone! It’s understandable. She’ll do whatever it takes to protect herself and her son. But my loyalty has always been to you. For five years, I’ve been by your side. Watching your back.”
“That was true before I was alpha, too.”
A pained look came across her face. “Stone… I loved you when we were kids.”
The words hung baldly between us. She let her hands fall to her side, still holding the phone, and she couldn’t look up and meet my eyes.
“Then this woman comes in, part of the Longroad pack, the reason Brennan is dead—or so we thought—and you melt like snow in June.”
“You’d be the only one who thought so.” If Amelia had seen any evidence of what she did to me, of how I felt, she’d be safe asleep in my bed.
Teresa sat on the edge of that bed. “Yeah, well, I know you. And I know how you look at her and what you mean when you don’t say a word.”
“You were jealous.”
